Emotional Jump-starts

One of the things I’ve struggled slightly with when writing this blog is the personal / professional balance.  As a reader I’m not overly interested in reading what a blogger ate for breakfast, or the exact number of words he or she has managed to write that day, but equally I like to know the person behind the words.  The unique quality of blogging is that to some degree, it’s a journal.  Unedited.  From the heart.

And whilst, as those of you who regularly read my blog will know, I’m a big advocate of keeping your personal life separate from your writing – letting it influence sentiments and scenarios, but not completely take over, so that fiction remains fiction and not an autobiography – when it comes to blogging, the lines are blurred.  The rules more fluid.

Just flicking through the offerings of the Word Press ‘writing’ tab is a good enough example of this.  Some bloggers are historians, writing blog posts like school assignments.  Others literally use their blog as a computerized diary, including information of little interest to anyone other than their closes friends.

And yet, in my experience, my most successful posts on The Elementary Circle have been those which have come from the heart.  Tales of my background – My Crazy Unorthodox Life – my aspirations as a writer – J.K Raises the Bar – my career ‘solutions’ as I endeavour to become a career author, – Don’t Forget Your Day Job – and even my internal debate as to whether I can ‘officially’ call myself an author still – So Am I an Author Yet? 

So, with all that in mind, I HAD planned to write a post about ‘Emotional Jump-starts’.  The various triggers that have kicked me into action with my writing over the years.  The things which have driven me to put pen to paper with definite passion.  Ironically one of the biggest jump starts I had in writing was a really big break-up.  I say ironic, because yesterday I was dumped!  And that’s where the good old personal/ professional line comes in, because it’s not something I particularly want to talk about, and yet in some ways it’s very pertinent to this post.

I’m a Comfort Writer.  When I’m upset, I WRITE! It’s a pattern I know, and understand, and to be honest, it’s the very reason I’m typing right now.  I kept a diary from the age of 14, and whenever I was upset or feeling down about something, I would write.  Over the years, I kept the diaries almost daily, right up to the time I began to write Flicker in Australia.  And when my journal-keeping disappeared into insignificance, it was my fiction which took it’s place – using up all my desire to write each day, but remaining my emotional outlet.

And whilst obviously a journal is hugely different to fiction, and it wouldn’t be fair to anyone to simply narrate your life day by day, for some reason it’s actually more cathartic to write about other people’s fictitious lives than it is to wallow in your own sad tales.

Writing is my chocolate.  My Bridget Jones bowlful of ice-cream.  It’s how I forget my troubles, and gain perspective on issues, whether my characters are facing those very same issues as I am, or whether I’m writing about something completely unrelated.  Writing is another world, a world where you’re not a girlfriend, or an ex-girlfriend, or a troubled employee, crap best-friend, or over-burdened mother.  It’s a world where you hold all the reigns.  You’re in total control, and you can completely craft the outcomes without having to encounter the variables of other people.

Writing isn’t just a retreat for heartbreak.  It’s an escape from grief, and from whatever else causes your pain.  Or rather, that’s what I’ve realised writing has become for me.  I tend to write something each day.  Not because I’m forcing myself to write (Check out my views on that here! – ‘Falling into the Forced Writing Trap’) but because for me it’s a necessary wind-down to the day – whether that writing is on this blog, or a book, or editing, or even just planning out a story.  But the thing I’ve noticed is that my writing behaviour changes according to my emotional state of mind.  And if I’m stressed or upset about something, not only does the writing help me organise my own personal headspace, but the calibre of what I produce is genuinely better.

‘Flicker’ was a book written from heartbreak, and grief – so much so that I spent a LONG time editting out the more journalistic sections of the novel, until I felt happy that I had skimmed out the ‘Charly’ elements from the book, and that Felicity Firestone, the main character, wasn’t simply an image of myself.

However, ‘The Dream Navigator’, my second book, and the one which is currently with publishers, was formed from a different passionate reaction.  Those of you who have been reading my blog for some time will know that I had a different agent at PFD before I was represented by the lovely Lucy Dundas, and that other agent actually asked me to sideline Flicker after about 6 months of editing, the most major edit being cutting the word count from 180,000 words down to 90,000.  I’m sure any writers reading can imagine my sentiments, when I was told to forget a book which I had spent a year and a half writing and perfecting.

I was pretty bloody angry!  And it was that anger which bred determination, and that determination which saw me put pen to paper and create the first chapter of The Dream Navigator – the section of my writing which has probably received the most critical acclaim.

So, what have I learnt from all of this (apart from that my choice in boyfriends apparently sucks?!) …

I’ve learnt that I’m an emotional writer.  And that when I’m feeling down, or angry, or passionate about something, I ought to put pen to paper.  Because the things I create will not only make me feel ten times better, but they also might turn out to be pretty damn good 🙂

What about you?  What gets you writing?  What makes your writing good?  And what turns it into something you’ll simply delete it the next time you read it?

As ever, please comment below, and feel free to tell me what you think on Twitter – http://twitter.com/#!/CC_Lester

C-C xxx

Feature on Elli Writes

Thanks to journalist, author, and fellow blogger Liz Carlton for this lovely feature on her blog ‘Elli Writes‘.

And wow! – only just saw the front page of her blog, and I’m everywhere … thank you so much Liz, I feel very honoured!!

C-C xx

Back on the Wagon!

So I’m back writing a novel again 🙂

I came up with the premise of Mercury’s Child some time back, but have had various excuses for not properly starting it … up until now!  I moved back to the UK almost a month ago, and still haven’t got the green light to start my new job, so I figure I should be making use of my time by writing.  I’ve recently written a couple of competition entries, however due to the rules, I can’t ‘publish’ them until I know whether I’ve won or not.  However THIS I can ‘publish’ … it’s the first chapter of Mercury’s Child, hot off the press ….

I’ll post it as a separate blog post so that it’s easier to find in later months, but for now, let me give you a brief outline of the book.

Mercury’s Child is a science fiction novel.  The main character, Halley MacFadden is just eleven years old, however I think the book will still remain in the young adult genre, like most of my books – though possibly the younger end – 13-15 as opposed to the 16+ age group that Flicker and TDN were written for.

I don’t want to reveal too much at this point, so all I will say is sit back, have a read, and let me know what you think!

Cheers,

C-C xx

The Writing Game

The more I get to grips with WordPress and the world of the writer blogger, the more exciting stuff I find.

So first of all, last night I discovered The 3-Day Novel Contest.  Now, to be honest, I’m not sure how long any novel I wrote in three days would be … I have an awful tendency to read and re-read stuff until I think it’s word-perfect, which could make for a rather short three day project, but I do really like the idea.

I’ve also found a lot of Flash Fiction on the web, which is another concept I didn’t know a great deal about until very recently.  I guess the post I wrote yesterday ‘The Time I Dated a Vampire’ could be classed as flash fiction, as it’s an 850 word snippet of what you imagine to be a far bigger story?  On my unemployed hunt for writing competitions, I DID discover two flash fiction competitions – the Unbound Press Flash Fiction Competition,  (entries have to be less than 500 words), and the Lightship Flash Fiction Competition (entries have to be less than 600 words) if anyone’s interested.

My little foray into Writing Prompts yesterday opened my eyes to a whole web of such prompts – which I think is pretty cool and exciting 🙂 I feel a bit like I’m back in English class at school.

And my most recent find is this blog post HERE.  In the post on Indigo Spider, the anonymous blogger introduced me to two new writing ideas I hadn’t come across before.

1) Picture prompts – what a brilliant idea!  Especially when you’re feeling a bit ‘blocked’.  You could literally do a random image search on google, and make yourself write a fictional piece based on whatever random picture the search churns up!

2) Chain writing!  I LOVE this idea, especially as I’m beginning to understand what a great community of fellow writers there are on WordPress.  Why not take part in a big game together?!  Do you remember that game we played as children, where you folded a piece of paper in four, and then passed it around a circle.  The first person drew the head, then the next person drew the arms, then the third person drew the legs, and then the last person drew the feet, and then you unravelled the paper to see the finished result.

How about doing that with writing?  A group of writers agree to play.  Each writes the first 500 words of a story, any story, and then all the writers switch stories, and continue someone else’s story for another 500 word.  And so  on …..

This is definitely a game that my inner child would enjoy playing!

In fact, if anyone fancies it, we could schedule one big group writing session???

Post a comment below if you fancy joining in, and if we get enough writers interested …. (I’m thinking more than 4 to make the stories a decent length), then we can designate some deadlines for each section of the story!

C-C xx

The Time I Dated A Vampire (Writing Prompt)

Following on from my post ‘I’m Bored’ I decided to spend an hour writing a response to Maria Kelly’s Writing Prompt ‘Twilight – Re-Vamped’.  Let me know what you think, write your own response and share the link, or give me another writing task!

C-C xx

The Prompt – ‘Write a strong female character in a vampire situation.’

The Time I Dated A Vampire

 

“So you’re telling me you’re dead?’  I frowned up at my new boyfriend.  We’d been seeing each other just two months when he decided to drop that particular bombshell on me.

I’ll admit, there had been signs that something wasn’t quite right.  The cultural references for a start…  I mean, surely everyone watched Rainbow and Wackaday when they were kids?  But I guess if you were one hundred years-old in the eighties, children’s television wouldn’t have been so much of a priority.

And I did notice how cold he seemed whenever we shared a bed … but some people are just cold, right?

But I guess that’s the distinction.  Some people are cold.  All the living dead are freezing!

‘Well yes,’ Thom nods awkwardly.

‘You’re dead!’

‘I think you’re missing the point … I’m trying to explain here.’

‘Well, no Thom, not really, because I’m pretty sure you’re telling me that you’ve already died.  That you’re a walking corpse!  That you’ve roamed this earth for hundreds of years without aging … ’

‘Yes, but …’

‘No Thom, no buts!  This is well and truly fucked up!’

‘But … but we can work around it …’

I stared up at him in disbelief.  ‘Work around it?  How exactly does one ‘work around’ the fact that their boyfriend is dead?!  I’m pretty sure the normal way of ‘working around’ it would be grief counselling … though given the current circumstances, I don’t think that would really work!’

‘Amy, I just think you’re over-reacting a little bit!’

‘Over-reacting!’ I almost shrieked.  ‘I’m sorry, but how exactly was I meant to take this news?’

‘Well, all the other girls ….’

I shook my head, angry blood boiling beneath my skin.  Only my skin.

‘Now is not the time to fill me in on how many human partners you’ve had!’

‘But …’

‘But what Thom?  How well did all these hundreds of previous relationships go for you?  I’d put a fairly large bet on the fact that none of them ended up well! Let me guess … they all died Thom?  They all got really wrinkly and old, while you remained young and hot … or should I say cold … and then they died!  So go on then  Thom … what you could possibly have to offer me?’

Thom frowned at me, no longer clueless and instead, getting increasingly pissed off with me.  ‘Offer you?  Amy, I’m the same person I was yesterday!’

And the decade before that, and the century before that …  I remember thinking!

He continued ‘Can you really say you didn’t at least have some suspicion?  It’s not really like I’m telling you out of the blue!’

Pissed off wasn’t the right tone to take with me at that point.  I mean, for god’s sake, the man had just told me he was a corpse!

‘Oh, I’m sorry Thom … I forgot that was meant to be top of my boyfriend check-list … up there with ‘does he seem to be a nice guy?’ … ‘Does he look like he could be a member of the walking dead?’

‘Could you please stop calling me that?  I’m a vampire!’

‘Oh yes of course.  Please draw attention away from the fact that you’re dead, and focus on your blood-sucking pastime instead!’

It seemed fighting pissed off with more pissed off actually worked, because suddenly Thom began to back down.

‘Amy, please, just calm down for a second.  It’s not as black and white as it seems.  Please just let me explain my lifestyle to you …’

I gritted my teeth.  ‘Look, Thom … I understand it can’t be as simplistic as the movies make out … but really, please elaborate on how you see this working?  Because from my perspective it seems like you’re asking me to give up the future I’ve always imagined – having children, growing old with the person I love – just so that you can masquerade as a ‘normal person ‘and get a bit of affection along the way.  Thom, I’m sorry, but it’s not fair on me! And that’s not even touching upon the whole blood drinking thing!’

‘So, what?  That’s it then?  I open my heart to you … and you’re dumping me for being honest?’  If he’d been able to cry, I’m pretty sure there would have been tears in his eyes at this point.

‘No Thom, I’m not dumping you for being honest.  I’m dumping you for lying to me in the first place!  You knew how much I’d been messed around in the past.  How important honesty was to me … How adamant I was that I wouldn’t get close to another guy again unless I trusted him totally.  And you took that trust and threw it in my face!  I’m sorry, but ‘not mentioning you’re a vampire’ isn’t an omission.  It’s lying about the fact that you’re human!  And of all the lies to found a relationship on, that’s pretty much the worst one going.’

And that was the time I dumped a vampire.

In the Spirit of Competition …

Ok, so I have a couple of excuses as to why I’ve been AWOL from the world of blogging for the past two weeks.  The first is that I’m finally back in England, after two and a half years travelling, so things are a little ‘abnormal’ to say the least.  The second is that, after two and a half years of dragging my poor old MacBook around the world, I figured it was time it got a bit of TLC, so my laptop has been in the Apple Store for the past fortnight.

But my main excuse is that my writing has been concentrated elsewhere.  Because I’m revelling in the phenomenon that is being a citizen of the country you are living in (quite a novelty for me) … and entering competitions!

Now, I know the world is for the most part computerised, however you’ll notice in the small print of most competitions, that even if they appear to be simply online, they normally require you to be a citizen or resident of the country where the competition originated.  This is especially prevalent in magazine competitions, where even if a magazine is global, like Marie Claire, the competitions are only local.

So now that I’m back HOME, I’ve been making the most of being British and entering a ton of writing competitions!!!

I’ve talked in the past about using writing exercises, particularly when you’re feeling a bit stuck.  I have to admit to having been brainstorming an idea for a new book for the past month, and feeling like not all the pieces have clicked in place yet.  So it’s great to have a diversion which exercises my good old ‘writing muscle’. 

My two favourites this past week have been the Grazia writing competition, called ‘The Deadline’, and a scheme by Marie Claire to pair young aspiring women up with successful role models in their chosen business.

The first competition centred around a pre-written paragraph, by the writer Kate Mosse, which you were required to transform into an entire first chapter.  The paragraph was very different to my normal style of writing, and required me to think out of the box I’ve become most comfortable in, which was a great challenge, and something which kept me scribbling for a good couple of days.

The second competition is of a different nature.  The Inspire & Mentor scheme could provide me with a best-selling author as a mentor, which is pretty damn exciting!  The scheme is an extension of the successful Prince’s Trust scheme which aims to help underprivileged women survive and succeed in life. However readers of the magazine Marie Claire can also benefit from the guidance of a professional mentor.

As a young woman still very much trying to find her feet in the world of writing and publishing, I think initiatives like this one are brilliant.

Right … I’m off to find some more fun competitions 😉 And speaking of competitions, if you haven’t already, check out yesterday’s post about Elli Write’s April Competition.

Cheers,

C-C xxx

Falling into the ‘Forced Writing Trap’

As I trawl through the offerings of other ‘writer bloggers’ on WordPress, I regularly come across two personal niggles.

The first is people blogging simply to tell the world EITHER that they are feeling totally uninspired, and can’t write a single word, OR to report exactly how inspired they are feeling, by telling us all EXACTLY how many words/pages they have written that day.

And that is ALL they write in a blog post!

Really?  Is this the kind of stuff you want to waste your words on?  There are only 24 hours in a day … both yours, and mine … please don’t waste them with blog posts like that!  Even if I were your Mum I wouldn’t want to know this kind of stuff!

I’d rather read an opinion, a paragraph of pose, a poem …  Think about it – your blog-post has a short shelf life on the WordPress ‘Recently Posted’ Writing Page. Don’t put off future readers by catching their eye with a mundane post like that! They won’t ever come back!  Complaints about writer’s block, or self-congratulatory back-patting over a couple of paragraphs of writing should be reserved for the private sphere.

Either get a journal … or if you still insist on addressing the blogosphere, then turn it into something positive. Write about how you cure your personal writer’s block, or what helps inspire you on ‘good writing days’ …  At least a reader can take something from those kinds of posts.

My second niggle is what I like to call the  ‘Forced Writing Trap’.

While I understand that every now and again writers may need a metaphorical kick up the bum to write, I’m really against setting a specific goal of words to write each day.

Like any author, I go through periods of hyper-creativity, and phases of zero-creativity. I have days where I stare at a page and am happy to complete a full sentence, and other days where I’m forced to stop simply because my lap-top battery has run out, or it’s 4am and I’m meant to be up again in three hours.

But rather than reprimand myself for not making a word quota, or seeing a super-creative day as meaning I don’t have to write for another three day, I prefer to simply roll with the punches, and treat each day as it comes.

Writing a novel shouldn’t be a series of daily battles, but one long war.  Sometimes that means you don’t write for a week, and other times it means all you do for three days is hack away at your laptop.

I can understand that committing to a ‘5000 words per day’ regime may discipline you to write … I just think that where a novel is concerned, if you insist on writing 5000, or however many, words a day, every day, you are often going to produce 5000 words of crap!

On my zero-creativity days, if I were to force my novel forward 5000 words, what I’d most probably be doing would be setting my book back at least 2 days of re-writing.

Instead, on those days when I sit down at the computer, and can’t see a path through the metaphorical trees, I find other tasks.  I might do administrative chores linked to my book – like numbering and heading pages, or keeping track of the developing stories or character profiles.  Or if there’s a particular topic the book requires me to know about, I might do some research.  Another positive thing I often do when I’m not feeling creative enough to write, is to edit.  I look back over previous chapters, and sometimes simply re-reading a chapter or two will get me into the correct frame to continue with the story.

And if that still doesn’t work … I don’t push it.  I read something else, or heaven forbid … DON’T DO ANYTHING!  Writing shouldn’t be a chore.  We do it because we love it.  It’s the future career we’ve chosen for ourselves … and for the first couple of years at least, we’ve chosen it not for monetary recompense, but for a creative outlet.  So why would you force that outlet?  Shouldn’t it be fun?  And shouldn’t you be proud of what you write?

If I read 5000 words I’ve written, I want to feel proud of them.  I want them to be polished and perfect, and the best 5000 words I could have used to describe that particular scene.  I don’t simply want them to be five thousand random words … because I NEEDED the word count reader to say ‘5000’.

Just to clarify, this isn’t me complaining about those of you blogging everyday.  As I’ve explained before, in The Author, The Journalist and The Blogger I address fiction writing very differently to blog writing, and don’t have any problem with people resolving to write a blog post every day, because the blogs stand alone each day, and a bad day of blogging won’t wreck a whole story.  However, saying that, I will obviously object if all your ‘blog every day’ does is tell me how many words you have or haven’t written that day 😉

On a personal note – I signed up to Script Frenzy … which some might see as a ‘Forced Writing Trap’ – 100 words of a script in a month.  But with Script Frenzy, I simply see it as a task you could give yourself a month to complete.  An inspiration, rather than a set word count governing your day.  And in that light, I have to admit to taking it rather liberally so far … In the absence of Final Draft, I’ve been struggling to form my words into an acceptable script format.  As a result, this month, whenever I’ve felt the need to write, I’ve found myself turning to blog posts instead of the script.  But rather than punishing myself for not fulfilling my ‘Script Frenzy’ commitment, I’m simply happy to be creating something legible.

Should I tell you how many words I wrote today now? 😉

C-C xxx

The Ladder to the Top

Following on from my post about The Author Brand, I thought it might be an inspiration to others to collate some information about some of the world’s most famous authors, and their paths to success.   Today I’ve focussed on rejections by agents and publishers.

The ladder to the top can be a long and treacherous one, and it seems not even the most successful authors made it to the summit unscathed!

J.K. Rowling

‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ was rejected by twelve different publishers before Bloomsbury finally took it on, and only then on the advice of the CEO’s eight-year old daughter!

John Grisham

Grisham penned his first novel, the iconic ‘A Time to Kill’ whilst legally representing a 12 year-old rape victim.  After three years writing the famous tale, Grisham was rejected by over thirty publishing houses before Wynwood Press finally cut him a break.

Stephen King

Stephen King took the rejection of his first novel ‘The Long Walk’ so badly, even though he only submitted it to one publisher, that he gave up on the story all together.

Meg Cabot

The bestselling author of ‘The Princess Diaries’ faced rejection after rejection for three years before finding a publisher.   She admits to having kept every single rejection letter in a giant U.S. postal bag which is so heavy she can’t even lift it!   And editors didn’t hold back with their criticism… one particularly scathing review stated that ‘The Princess Diaries’ wasn’t suitable for children.  Try telling that to the millions of children who have since bought the books and watched the movies!

William Golding

‘Lord of The Flies’ was rejected twenty times before being published.  One editor actually described it as ‘an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull’!  Oops!

(The Diary of )Anne Frank

One publisher rejected the iconic journal because ‘The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift the book above the ‘curiosity’ level.’

Joseph Heller

Apparently Catch-22 was originally entitled ‘Catch-18’ but Heller increased the number with each rejection letter! One of the ‘best rejection’ it received said ‘Apparently the author intends it to be funny – possibly even satire – but it is really not funny on any intellectual level …’

George Orwell

Four publishers rejected the iconic ‘Animal Farm’, including famous poet T.S. Elliot.  Elliot criticised Orwell’s ‘Trotskyite politics’, whilst another editor simply stated ‘It is impossible to sell animal stories in the USA’!

Harper Lee

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, one of my favourite novels, was rejected by J.B. Lippincott Company because it ‘had too many short stories strung together, and needed to be rewritten’.

On a similar note, a few years ago the director of the Jane Austen Festival decided to find out what sort of reception Jane herself might get, had she been an author in this day and age.  With only a few minor changes, David Lassman submitted the opening chapters and plot synopses to three of Austen’s most famous books – Pride and Prejudice, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion – to publishers and agents. He submitted the books under early titles which Austen had once considered, and used the pen name ‘Alison Laydee’, a play on Austen’s nom de plume ‘ A Lady’.

Despite not even changing the opening line of Pride & Prejudice – one of the most famous lines in literature – only one editor noticed the plagiarism!  And EVERYONE else rejected ALL of Austen’s work.

I realise that possibly says more about the lack of education of those we’re pinning our hopes to at the moment, than anything else … but it also shows that even literary genius can go unnoticed in today’s harsh market!  So don’t get too disheartened by the rejection emails … we’ll get there in the end 😉

As another of my favourite childhood authors, C.S. Lewis, once said … ‘Failures are fingerposts on the road to achievement.’

C-C xx

The Author Brand

One of the lovely comments on my Rebirth, Rebranding, Re-invention post mentioned ‘establishing your writer’s brand’ and it got me thinking…  (Thanks Jess for the inspiration!)

No matter what stage of your career you’re currently at, being an author is a very different profession thanks to the age of the internet.

Authors used to bask in the shadow of anonymity.  Even without a pen-name, they were mere names … perhaps illustrated with a grainy black and white photo and an aloof bio on the back cover of their novels.  ‘C-C Lester lives with her cat Felix and her budgie Steve in Battersea, and enjoys strolls along the beach. ‘

(I don’t really… before you start Googling 😉 )

But the internet has changed all that.  It’s not only added real-life faces to the grand names … but  it’s also added real-life stories.  Find one person who when you mention J.K. Rowling doesn’t remark on her rags to riches success, and the ‘writing on napkins in coffee shops’ story!

People spend a lot of time with books.  They retreat to them, a private world they can slip in and out of, away from the hustle of a crowded train carriage, or the uncomfortable heat of a parental row.  The characters become treasured friends, and it’s easy to attach similar affection and proximity to the person responsible for creating those characters.  Readers want to know about their authors …

As a reader, I happily confess to reading author bios.  I love the short paragraphs tucked inside book covers.  I like to guess how much the writer has in common with her protagonist, muse over whether I’d like her in real life, and wonder if she’s using a pen name.  I like to know if she’s young or old, pretty or ugly, married or single. I want to be able to put the book in context, to frame the story in a world outside of its pages.

I fully admit it … I’m a nosy reader!

And then, as an aspiring writer, I wonder how hard her path to literary success was.  Did she find an agent as easily as I did?  Were her rejection letters from publishers more inspiring than mine?  How many rejections did she receive?  How old was she when she first got published?  How long did it all take?

Yes … I’m a nosy writer too!

The thing is, whilst some of the answers might be available in the book cover’s rigid biographical paragraph, the internet has provided an even better location to find answers to all those questions … and more!

Obviously there’s the Google-stalker factor, which is something I’ve discussed in previous posts –   see ‘Why Blogging is like Facebook …’ and ‘The Pen Name … a Shield to accompany the Literary Sword?’ .  One carefully worded Google search, and a reader can know an awful lot about his favourite author … provided she doesn’t use a pen name.

(A small aside – Bloggers with pen names BEWARE – I’ve noticed on a lot of comments that your REAL NAME comes up in the email address attached to your blog! )

But where authors are concerned, there’s a far easier way to find out the answers to all your nosey questions … and you’re staring right at it.

Authors blog!  We are creatures of habit, who love to write, and by definition, enjoy touching others with our words, whether fictional or not.  In the age of Twitter and blogging, what better way to reach others with our words, than with the immediacy of the internet?

By blogging, we are opening the fourth wall to our readers.  We are showing them the workings behind the novel – whether it’s just generally the way our minds work, or more specific details about our lives and inspirations.  Author blogs allow you to find the answers to all your nosey questions … how long DID it take her to find an agent?  How many times DID she get rejected?  What did those rejections REALLY say?

But the blogosphere isn’t a one-way street.  It’s interactive.  Not only is the author bearing (selective parts of) her soul to her readers, she’s also enabling them to challenge and question her.  Finally readers are being given the thing they have never had with their favourite authors – dialogue.  And an author’s willingness to partake in such a dialogue may well affect the way her readers see her.

This brings me back to Jess’s initial idea – a writer’s brand.

Think about the world we live in.  Not only is it a world of Twitter and blogging … it’s also a world of PR and Marketing.  And the savvy author needs to bear that in mind … particularly if she writes under a pen name.  Those of us not protected by that particular shield (or like me, who have very brazenly stepped aside from their shield and revealed their true name) can only control to some degree the information available about them on the internet.  But if you’ve created a person, you have full control of the data about that person on the internet.  And even if you haven’t created a person, and are writing as yourself, then it’s wise to think about the things attached to your ‘writer persona’.

By creating this website, I have unwittingly created an author brand.  If you type ‘C-C Lester, author’ into Google, the top four hits link to this blog, and the fifth to my Twitter (which is predominantly based on my blog).  This blog has become C-C Lester, the author.  And hopefully the brand I’ve unwittingly created is an honest and likable one!

I’ve said it before, in ‘Why Blogging is like Facebook …’ and I’ll say it again.  Think about what you write.  As far as we’re aware, the internet is here to stay, and the archives are endless.  So make sure that everything you personally attach to your ‘author brand’ properly represents you as a writer.  It’s also where posts like ‘Get It Write 😉‘ (about grammar and spell-checking) and ‘To Journal … or Not To Journal’ (on making your blog too personal) come in.  In ten years time, when you’re a famous author, do you really want the world to know how much you hate your ex-boyfriend?  Or that you don’t really know where apostrophes go, and have to rely on an editor to tweak such mundane things as grammar?!

Personally, I think it’s exciting!  I like the idea of being more than just an aloof name and a grainy picture on a bookshelf.  The role of authors is changing, and I just hope that my career will enable me to properly experience those changes first-hand.  I hope, in years to come, that my story will be a positive one, and one full of inspiration and interest to my readers.  And that somewhere down the line, I’ll look back at this post and smile at the legacy I began to establish back when I was a ‘nobody’ who simply enjoyed to write 🙂

C-C xxx

To Journal … or not to Journal?

I’ve always been a diary-keeper.  Since I was fourteen, I’ve religiously kept a journal.  On busy weeks it might just be one entry, on holiday I would write every night.  I wrote about every detail of my life – from the boy I was crushing on, to how fat I was feeling, to what I wanted to be when I grew up…

Thirteen years later, and while I haven’t grown up, stopped crushing on boys, or occasionally feeling fat … I appear to have finally finished journalling.  I kept a diary for eleven years.  There are literally hundreds of them in a box in my attic –   the ins and outs of my youth, documented in page after page of self-absorbed, angst-ridden teenage waffle.  And then I began to write fiction properly … and I stopped writing about my own life.

I guess I just realised that I only need a certain amount of writing in my day-to-day life, and that these days that quota is used up by fiction writing … and now, between books, by blogging.

But the thing is, fiction writing isn’t like writing a journal. For reasons I have discussed in blog posts (see The 7 Sins of Fiction Writing, and Writing From The Heart) in my opinion, the best fiction is just that … fictional.  If you let too much reality tinge the imaginative side of your work, you actually impede your own creativity.

So where should the true outlet for my need to vent be?  Should I use my blog?

Now this is where I may well alienate a large amount of my readership … because I don’t believe that a blog should be an online journal!

Before you block my blogsite, and report me for an improper attitude towards blogging, bear with me.

I’m not saying blogs shouldn’t be about people.  As you’ll have noticed, at least two of the blogs I’ve spoken about in my blog are about people – Mikalee Byerman’s blog about her life after divorce, and ‘The Becoming Year’ – a blog by Abigail about the year she had given herself to make major changes in her life.

What I’m saying is that autobiographical journal-like blogs work when you are detailing a specific area of your life.

Love lives, weight-loss, job issues … all can be interesting and helpful to readers, if sold as just that – a blog about my appalling love life, a blog about my attempts to lose 10 stone, a blog full of notes from my retard boss….

What I don’t agree with, is just keeping a journal online for all the world to see.

Because I don’t really understand why anyone would want to read it?  And why you would want everyone to read it?  Wasn’t that why the diaries we were given as children had crappy decorative locks on them?

I know, in the age of Facebook, that that might seem a rather short-sighted explanation, but Facebook isn’t a journal.  It’s a carefully crafted and editted representation of a person.  It’s the person as they want the outside world to see them. A journal is the person behind that shell.  It is the inner-workings of someone’s mind … and there are too many of these delicate, and self-intrusive blogs on the net.

To be honest, I can’t work out exactly what it is which annoys me about them…

Is it narcissism? Is it that the writer thinks that he or she has such important inner musings that the whole world needs to know about her sex life, AND her weight issues, AND her shopping wish-list?  I genuinely don’t think that even if the diary belonged to a famous person, I would want to know about her blackheads, and new fad diet, and how her Mum had pissed her off that morning!

Is it the writing purist in me? Who feels like writing that is made public should be at least to some degree crafted … no matter what the medium. (see The Author, The Journalist & The Blogger and Get it Write 🙂 )

Or is it just that  I view the ‘blogosphere’ as a giant free magazine? And when I read a magazine or a newspaper, it’s normally the Opinions and the Editorials which I most enjoy reading.  This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy reading about people, because these Comment sections of a newspaper are normally, by definition, the most heavily laced in personal opinion and experience.  However, if I were to open a newspaper and read a stream of consciousness about how the editor or commentator was having a bit of a crappy day, didn’t get an writing done, had period pain and a massive craving for chocolate … then I doubt I would read that paper again.

And so … in my opinion at least … journalling DOES have some place in the blogosphere.  But only within the confines which you yourself craft for your own blog.  If you want to write about your crazy NSA sex life, by all means do so … just make that the focus of your blog, and apply as much care to that writing as you would anything else you distribute into the public eye.

And personal opinion and experience also matter … just keep them  to topic, and try to make something interesting out of it, so the reader isn’t simply reading a litany of reasons as to why your day was pretty mediocre!

C-C xx